Susan

Hi! I'm Susan Chrobak and I'm the computer teacher at Swansea Elementary. Welcome to my Web 2.0 Tools wiki. On the following pages you'll find lessons and ideas from my teachings of 4 year olds to 10 year olds. There are some great websites you can use as a resource for teaching as well as web 2.0 tools complete with lesson plans. Thanks for visiting. I hope you find something useful.


 * The following paragraphs were notes I made for the first group I was in, fall 2009.**

slideshare.net is a website I use to post my students' powerpoint presentations. With this website you use your own version of powerpoint and then attach it to your account in slideshare.net. It's free and easy to create a account at slideshare.net. Kids make more of an effort to produce quality work when they realize how many people can actually see their projects. It's a Web 2.0 tool because others can make comments about the powerpoints.

Audacity is free software you can download to your computer. I use it to record my students' voices. They may be reading a story they wrote or reading a book they learned how to read. After recording a voice you can also add snippets of music for the beginning or the end. You can even fade the music while the student is reading. The music can be found at freeplaymusic.com This recording can then be converted to an MP3 file, which is basically a podcast. I created a wiki for this project because you have to have a place to put the podcasts. You can listen to my students' stories they wrote about fall by going to smartones.wikispaces.com. I now understand that Audacity is not a Web 2.0 tool. However, wikispaces is!

As you may already know, you can also add powerpoint presentations to a wiki. So, I added a page to the smartones wiki for my 4th graders projects on animal research. So now, at smartones you'll find podcasts by my students and powerpoints by my students. Stay tuned!

It seems to me that if we are using and sharing our ideas about Web 2.0 tools then this fairly new term needs to be defined. Wikipedia says that the term first came into use in 2004. This term "is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing" A Web 2.0 site allows it's user to interact with other users or to change website content.

The following lessons were used with the 4th and 5th graders in my school to create their podcasts. I will put all these lessons on the collaborative unit Planning guide in the future if I can. It was many lessons, many days and there was no collaboration with classroom teachers because Swansea doesn't give specials teachers and classroom teachers time together ever. (that's if you don't count meeting in the hallway for 5 minutes). So, to write a story about fall and make a podcast of that story included the following lessons:
 * February 22, 2010**

1. Lesson 1- Brainstorm a word list for fall 2. Lesson 2- Write a sentence for each word 3. Lesson 3- Color code the sentences for those that would go into the same paragraphs 4. Lesson 4 -Make a web on Kidspiration with the fall words 5. Lesson 5- Copy the sentences you wrote earlier into Kidspiration 6. Lesson 6 -Publish from Kidspiration 7. Lesson 7- Edit and revise in Word 8. Lesson 8- Practice reading the story a million times. Record story into Audacity 9. Lesson 9- Choose music for the story at freeplaymusic.com

Teacher Finalizes the Podcast 10.Teacher creates smartones wiki 11.Teacher adds music to students' recordings and finalizes all sound engineering 12.Teacher adds podcast to wiki.


 * March 18, 2010**

The list below are my favorite web 2.0 tools:
 * tikatok.com -- this is a website where children can write books, illustrate them and share them with family. Books can even be purchased.
 * slideshare.net -- this is a place where you can post a powerpoint presentation you made on your computer.
 * wikispaces.com- set up your own website here.
 * audacity --this is free software you can download to record students reading.
 * freeplaymusic.com -- at this site you'll find snippets of music from all genres to add to podcasts.
 * jogtheweb.com --on this site you can string together several websites on the same topic so students don't have to keep putting complicated URLs into the address bar.


 * April 12, 2010**

ILT lesson 4.11 is about using Word Art to create a haiku. The link in the lesson to read haikus no longer works and the kids need to read tons of haikus before they can attempt to write any of their own. So, I created a jogtheweb page that has 5 sites filled with haikus all linked together. If you would like to read haikus go to:[| haiku-japanese poetry]


 * April 14, 2010**

The following pictures were taken of chart papers I hang in my room for various lessons. These chart papers have step by step directions and can be printed out on half sheets for students to have at their seats.

[|C0py_and_Paste_Kidspiration.JPG] --This image will help the kids make a multiplication table in Kidspiration.

[|adding_a_picture_to_powerpoint.JPG]--this image has directions of one way to add an image to a powerpoint presentation

[|ILT_lesson_5.16.JPG]--This lesson is the first in the Excel lessons. These are steps to find daily high temperatures for a city and put the info on an Excel document.

[|ILT_lesson_5.17.JPG]--This is the next step in the Excel lessons. How to average the temperatures.

[|Insert_table_into_Word.JPG]- this image gives directions to make a table for studying vocabulary words.

[|intro_to_powerpoint.JPG]- these directions will help the beginners get started on Powerpoint.